Al Gore Admits Trump ‘Inherited A Very Dangerous Situation’ With North Korea

Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted with regard to North Korea that President Donald Trump “inherited a very dangerous situation that has been building for some time.”

Gore made the statement during an interview with BBC4 radio’s Best of Today while discussing his new book, An Inconvenient Sequel, as well as the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

“This crisis had been building long before Donald Trump entered the White House, and that should be remembered,” he said.

While Gore said he disagreed with Trump’s recent “fire and fury” comments, he applauded Trump’s increased sanctions against North Korea and expressed approval of presidential advisers like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

“These are thoughtful men, experienced, and that should be a source of some comfort as we look at how the U.S. administration is handling this crisis,” he said.

Gore is taking a different tack from other Democrats in admitting that North Korea relations are a mess long in the making. Most Democrats have been focused on Trump’s rhetoric of fighting back.

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It was during Gore’s tenure as vice president that North Korea was not only given $4 billion in aid from the United States but was promised “two light-water nuclear reactors.”

“This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective — an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” said President Bill Clinton in 1994. “This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world.”

North Korea was supposed to “freeze and dismantle its nuclear program” and allow for inspections, although it was allowed to keep nuclear fuel rods “for an unspecified number of years,” which meant it could be building up nuclear weapons during that entire time.

The agreement that was made with North Korea and the United States was called the “Agreed Framework.” It fell apart in early 2000s when North Korea threatened to “restart missile tests” and the CIA discovered North Korea’s “secret uranium enrichment program.”

Nothing much changed between the United States and North Korea under the Bush and Obama administrations.

In 2015, The Associated Press reported that “(n)uclear-armed North Korea already has hundreds of ballistic missiles that can target its neighbors in Northeast Asia but will need foreign technology to upgrade its arsenal and pose a more direct threat to the United States.”

According to the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security in 2015, “the North likely has enough fissile material for at least 10 weapons, and that could increase to between 20 and 100 weapons by 2020.”